I feel extremely honoured to be invited to a conference in Cambridge at the end of April, that will discuss the contemporary class structure of society and how it is changing under ‘cognitive capitalism‘. A lot of my intellectual heroes will be present. The latter denotes a political economy where the central process has become the accumulation of immaterial assets.
I have discussed my own take on this in the introductory essay on the Political Economy of Peer Production, and in blog entries such as the one on netarchical capitalism, and related ones such as the following:
– on the distribution of capital (and everything else)
– the debate on ‘who owns the wisdom of crowds’
In short, I believe that we are moving to a new stage, where it is no longer the accumulation of immaterial assets that is central, but rather the control of participatory platforms, undertaken by a new segment of capital holders that I call netarchical capitalists.
Here’s the announcement, followed by a list of speakers:
“IMMATERIAL LABOUR, MULTITUDES AND NEW SOCIAL SUBJECTS: CLASS COMPOSITION IN COGNITIVE CAPITALISM”
Keynes Hall, King’s College, Cambridge CB2 1ST
Saturday 29 – Sunday 30 April 2006 :
10.00am to 6.00pm
Additional events Friday 28 April 2006
Website: ImmaterialLabour
LIST OF SPEAKERS AND PAPERS [in alphabetical order]
MICHEL BAUWENS [Foundation for P2P Alternatives]: “The political economy of
peer production”
ZANNY BEGG [Sydney, Australia]: “Imagining subjectivity – globalisation and
visual art”
MASSIMO DE ANGELIS and DAVID HARVIE: “Cognitive capitalism and the rat race:
how capital measures ideas and affects”
EMMA DOWLING [Birkbeck College, London]: “Formulating new social subjects?
An enquiry into the realities of a (hyper)-affective worker”
NICK DYER-WITHEFORD [University of Western Ontario]: “The circulation of the
common”
ED EMERY [Univ. adversitatis]: “General intellect and the Intifada: Part 2”
ANDREA FUMAGALLI [University of Pavia]: “Bioeconomics, knowledge and cognitive labour: new form of alienation and exploitation”
HARRY HALPIN [University of Edinburgh]: “Digital sovereignty: The immaterial
aristocracy of the World Wide Web”
MAURIZIO LAZZARATO: Title to be announced
GEORGE J. CICCIARIELLO MAHER [University of California, Berkeley]: Hegemonic articulation and the logic of separation
GIUSEPPINA MECCHIA [University of Pittsburgh]:Meeting Felix Guattari and the Italian Autonomists from Franco Berardi Bifo to Wu Ming
SANDRO MEZZADRA [University of Bologna]: A paper on the theory of autonomy
and migration and its relation to the question of class composition. Title to be announced
NEBOJSA MILIKIC: The inquiry with workers from Bor, Serbia
YANN MOULIER BOUTANG: Title to be announced
ALEXEI PENZIN [Moscow]: Analysing the concept of “commonality”
TONI NEGRI: Title to be announced
SABRINA OVAN [University of Southern California] The General Body
VASSILIS TSIANOS and DIMITRIS PAPADOPOULOS: Imperceptible politics: The
spectres of sociability in the age of postliberal sovereignty
CARLO VERCELLONE: A paper on Social Guaranteed Income. Title to be announced.
STEVE WRIGHT [Monash University]: There and back again: mapping the pathways within autonomist Marxism